The American Novel (Understanding Literature Through Close Reading) - Hardcover

About the Editor

Robert C. Evans is I. B. Young Professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he has taught since 1982. In 1984 he received his Ph.D. from Princeton University, where he held Weaver and Whiting fellowships as well as a University fellowship. In later years his research was supported by fellowships from the Newberry Library, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Mellon Foundation, the Huntington Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
In 1982 he was awarded the G. E. Bentley Prize and in 1989 was selected Professor of the Year for Alabama by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. At AUM he has received the Faculty Excellence Award and has been named Distinguished Research Professor, Distinguished Teaching Professor, and University Alumni Professor. Most recently he was named Professor of the Year by the South Atlantic Association of Departments of English.
He is one of three editors of the Ben Jonson Journal and is a contributing editor to the John Donne Variorum Edition.
He is the author or editor of over fifty books (on such topics as Ben Jonson, Martha Moulsworth, Kate Chopin, John Donne, Frank O'Connor, Brian Friel, Ambrose Bierce, Amy Tan, early modern women writers, pluralist literary theory, literary criticism, twentieth-century American writers, American novelists, Shakespeare, and seventeenth-century English literature. He is also the author of roughly three hundred published or forthcoming essays or notes (in print and online) on a variety of topics, especially dealing with Renaissance literature, critical theory, women writers, short fiction, and literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

"This is an excellent resource for those interested in the multicultural nature of modern literature in the US. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates, high school students, general readers." --Thomas P. Riggio, University of Connecticut [Choice]

Choice ReviewTaking a distinctive approach, Evans (Auburn Univ. at Montgomery) presents a close examination of passages representing 150 great American novels included in high school and college core curriculums. For Evans, a "close reading" of chosen passages achieves a better understanding of the novel. This two-volume set arranges entries alphabetically by title of the work, including an overview, selected passages (leading novels receive two to five passages), critical interpretation, and (somewhat unnecessary) discussion questions. Generally 300 words in length, passages include such literary gems as Holden Caulfield introducing himself in Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Volumes lack biographies but provide a useful introduction, brief bibliography, cross-references, and chronology. The predictable author selection (e.g., Faulkner, Hemingway, and Twain) omits Richard Ford, Reynolds Price, Joyce Carol Oates, and others. The majority of entries are by literary scholar Evans. Solomon, a Florida State University PhD candidate, contributed most of the entries on Henry James. Similar to Carl Rollyson's edited Notable American Novelists (CH, Feb'08, 45-2940), which features 140-plus essays on popular US and Canadian authors, this newer work goes in a different direction with its engaging, rich-passage interpretation. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and general readers. S. R. Curry University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Robert C. Evans's two-volume The American Novel (Facts on File) is a splendid, comprehensive teaching tool and seems reasonably priced at $150. As the publisher describes them, the volumes contain "close readings of selected passages from 150 great American novels, followed by analysis and questions for discussion." To be sure, I might again quibble around the fringe. The project is organized idiosyncratically, not chronologically or alphabetically by authors' names but alphabetically by title (Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! to Kingston'sThe Woman Warrior), and it occasionally stretches the definition of novel to include Maya Angelou's autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and such novellas as Melville's "Benito Cereno" and Faulkner's "The Bear." Still, I am hard-pressed to find a single canonical American novel that might be assigned to high schoolers or college undergraduates that Evans ignores, and he discusses some novels often challenged or even banned from classrooms (e.g., Huck Finn,To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye , and Lolita ). - Gary Scharnhorst, American Literary Scholarship (2011).

The way in which literature is studied has changed over the years. Structuralism, cultural materialism, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism have had their moments in the English departments of colleges and high schools. Although Facts On File's new Understanding Literature through Close Reading series hearkens back to the mid-twentieth century by espousing the central elements of New Criticism, as noted in the introduction to The American Novel (the first title in the series), the skills necessary for close reading are still useful and contribute to the success of other approaches. The 150 entries are arranged alphabetically by novel title, and each follows the same pattern. After a plot summary come several passages taken from the work. Each passage is preceded by a paragraph providing context and followed by an analysis using close-reading methods. Entries conclude with questions for writing or discussion. Works were chosen because they are among those most frequently taught and studied, and passages were chosen because they are well known, crucial to the plot, well phrased, or representative. There are five passages for Billy Budd, two for The Poisonwood Bible, three for Death Comes to the Archbishop, and one for A Separate Peace. Both volumes contain an alphabeticallist of the works covered and their authors. Volume 1 also has a chronological list of the novels. There is no index. This would be a useful and appropriate selection for a high-school or undergraduate library. --Danise Hoover  [Booklist]

Six of Twain's best-known novels are skillfully summarized, quoted from, and analyzed inUnderstanding Literature Through Close Reading: The American Novel (2 vols.), ed. Robert C. Evans (Facts on File). The sensitive and respectful treatment of these works is unusually thorough for a reference work. --Alan Gribben,  American Literary Scholarship, 2010